Hillary Clinton Should Have Thrown Her Theranos Fundraiser in 2014

There should really be no safer place for Hillary Clinton these days than Silicon Valley.

What with the combined factors of Northern California's tech epicenter having both Northern Californian liberalism and a metric sh!t-ton of money moving around, Hillary is the socially liberal centrist most likely to make rich techies shrug and say "Why not her? I guess?"

So the Hillary campaign could understandably be under the impression that it can just stand in the middle of Palo Alto and throw a rock, selecting the site where it lands for Hill's next fundraiser. But alas, according to re/code, it seems that might be exactly what it did for an event happening next week...

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According to an email sent out to potential attendees, the fundraiser will take place at the Theranos Palo Alto headquarters. “Participation Levels” start at $100 a pop for students, and for “Friends” at $250.

That's right, the Clinton campaign is heading over to Elizabeth Holmes' office to raise a little cash, which would have been fine had they done this in 2014. But in the last six months, the once deeply-beloved unicorn and its media darling founder have had their reputations shredded by reports that Theranos is a smoke and mirrors company predicated on blood-testing technology that might not even work.

With Holmes reputation-level verging on "Pariah," it is more than a little curious that Hillary and her backers haven't talked their way out of this event. But one clue as to why this shindig is still happening might be Holme's relationship with Chelsea Clinton, who will be the one appearing with Holmes at the event.

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Per re/code:

Previously, Holmes has participated in Clinton Foundation events, including a January 2015 “Health Matters Summit” that also included Donald Trump’s in-law and Oscar Health co-founder Josh Kushner. This past September, Holmes also spoke at the Clinton Foundation’s “Future of Impact” event in New York City. Chelsea Clinton, who has been hitting the campaign trail on her mother’s behalf, is one of the key figures at the Clinton Foundation and for the Clinton Global Initiative.

But even if Chelsea and Holmes are BFFs, it's fair to ask why no one in Camp Hillary has voiced enough concern about the optics to get this thing shoved off the calendar. While not an apples-to-apples comparison, it seems hard to believe that anyone on the Kasich campaign would let their candidate appear at a fundraiser hosted by his old pal Dick Fuld.

And the Bernie campaign must be literally salivating at the idea of Hillary taking money from another embattled private company... and this time it has a board member named Henry Kissinger.

Then again, maybe the Clinton campaign was banking on the discretion of Valley types to keep this thing quiet, even at these prices: